Walking around Santa Fe!

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!!

It sounds like we’re going to get popped with some more winter weather today here in Central Illinois! One of these days winter will be over, but probably not soon enough!!!!

When I was out in Santa Fe, N.M. a couple of weeks ago, I was able to spend a day walking around the downtown and shooting some photos! For me it’s always fun to get out and do this and it’s even more fun in a town like Santa Fe. The Southwest has a lot of great architecture and it’s just so different then what we see here in the Midwest! Lots of warm adobe tones and lots of turquoise colors really work well together and make for a lot of great photos!

I’ve got four photos for you this morning from Santa Fe. The top photo is from the
Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi and is a statue of Kateri Tekakwitha. She is the first Indian of North America to be promoted a saint. The photo on the left is a statue at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts called “Water Carrier”. The center photo is the inside of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. The last photo on the right is of the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.

It’s time to get to work, so I hope that you have a wonderful week and thanks for checking out my work!!!!

Kev

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Photography in Santa Fe, NM.

Cold Peoria Monday morning greetings to one and all!!!!

After spending the week in New Mexico last week and then getting back to Peoria late Sunday afternoon to a two foot snow drift in my driveway, I’m wondering why I came back home!!!! Oh yea, that work thing!!! 🙂

I was out in Santa Fe last week doing a shoot for my friends at Modern Quilts Unlimited magazine! We were shooting on location in Santa Fe at the beautiful Las Palomas B&B and it made the perfect location for all these quilt shots that we did! We were able to shoot in a bunch of the different rooms there and it made for some very interesting backgrounds! Some of photos were also taken outdoors and we really lucked up because the evening after we finished shooting, Santa Fe got four inches of snow and that would have ruined any outdoor photography!!! Fortunately for us we were able to get the shots that we needed, so everything worked out great!

Here’s one of my shots from Las Palomas and I think everyone is very happy with the shoot!!!!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work and I hope that you have a great week to come!!!

Kev

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I’m still banging the drum!!!

Monday morning greetings from Santa Fe, New Mexico!!!

Wow, the Super Bowl, yawn!!! The Super Bowl commercials, yawn!!! For all the build up and the hype for the big game, the NFL laid a big goose egg! Blow out games are never entertaining unless your team is the one that’s blowing out the opposition!!! I have a feeling that Animal Plant’s “Puppy Bowl” got better ratings then that yawner!!!!! For the most part the commercials were bad as well! It was funny becuase every-time I would watch a bad one, I would say to the room, “There’s another four million dollars down the drain”! Yes, 30 second spots were four million a pop! Scary but true!!!!

It’s the first road trip of the year and we’ve got a great spot to be shooting, Santa Fe, NM!!! We’ll be shooting for Modern Quilts Unlimited magazine and it should be a lot of fun! The colors and textures out here are inspiring and hopefully we’ll be able to bring that out in our photos!!!!

I’m still banging my drum about lighting!!! It’s been amazing to me over the last five or so years how we in the advertising world have gotten away from doing lighting on people and products. I know that this is an old school thing because back in the day you had to do lighting becuase of the cameras and film. With today’s modern digital cameras, it’s not necessary to do lighting to get a good photo, but we are missing out on the mood that can be created with lighting! There is a drama and mood that is created when you light up a subject and most of the photos that I’m shooting for clients these days lack that dramatic look. There are a host of reasons from our new cameras, time is money and budgets have been squeezed, to “It’s good enough”! It’s sad to see because I think about the lack of impact that photos are missing today!

Here’s a shot that we did last week for my friends at Simformotion and this is one of my clients that does see the need to have photos with impact for their products. Taking a little bit of time and doing some creative and dramatic lighting, we are able to take a product that might not be all that exciting and turn it into an interesting and attention getting photograph! Hopefully as time goes on, more and more clients will want their products and people to stand out and have impact!!!

It’s time to get busy and Santa Fe is waiting, I’ve got lighting and photography to do!!!! 🙂

I hope that you have a great week as always and thanks for taking the time to check out my work!!!

Kev

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Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Arctic cold Monday morning greetings to one and all from the frozen city of Peoria!!!!

From my intro can you tell that we here in the Midwest and Central Illinois are sick of winter and ready for spring? If not, we are! The last couple of winters in Peoria have been fairly mild and personally that type of winter isn’t too upsetting to me and others! We’d have a few cold days and then we’d hit some nicer weather in the 30’s to 40’s and that was pretty darn nice! This year over the last month or so we’ve been rocked with these extreme polar blasts time and time again and this morning is no exception! With temperatures in in the -10 range and wind chill’s in the -20 and below area, this winter is getting old real fast!!!! Having spent two weeks in Hawaii in December, I’m ready to get the heck out of here again and avoid some of this nasty cold weather again!!!! We’ll see!!!!

This weekend we were able to head South of Peoria and hit St. Louis and enjoy a little bit of a reprieve from winters blast!!! Sad to say that even they won’t be able to avoid this cold today!!!! Here’s a couple snaps of my from Sunday at the Arch and it was gorgeous with temperatures in the high 50’s and a very nice sunny day!!! It almost made me think of spring!!!!!

For my friends North of the Mason-Dixon Line, here’s hoping that you are going to stay warm the next couple of days!!!! For those of you South and West of the MD Line, we don’t want to hear it!!!!

Have a great week as always and stay warm!!!! 🙂

Kev

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Peoria in wintertime!!!!

Monday morning peoria greetings to one and all!

Some of my friends might have the day off for the Martin Luther King holiday and some of my friends like me will be working!

I’m getting back into the flow of things work wise and had a number of shoots this past week! This has always been a slow time of the year for me, so any work is always a nice excuse to get out of the house!!!! I’m usually working on the computer and trying to get things caught up and finished up for 2013. As winter rolls along and things start to warm up and green up, that’s when things will start to get busy for me!

I was able to get out on Sunday morning before all of the NFL games in the afternoon and shoot a couple of shots of Peoria! We’ve been having these cold snaps that come into the area, but today it was pretty nice with the temperature in the high 30’s and sunny! We will all take more days like that!!!!! Here’s one of my snaps of Peoria and the city was looking good today!!!!!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work and I hope that you have a wonderful week!!!

Kev

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Top Ten Photos of 2013!!!

Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

What a difference a week makes! Last week we had below zero temperatures and wind chills that would rival the Arctic! This weekend in Peoria, the temperature got back to normal and even a little about at 40 degrees and you’d think that people were ready to break the summer shorts out! Winter’s not over by a long shot, but it sure has been nice to have a few days like we’ve been having as of late!!!!

One of the questions that I’ll get from people is “What’s your favorite or the best photo that you’ve ever taken?” To me, that’s always a very hard question because I like to think that my most recent work is always my best work. By that I think that I continue to learn and get better as a photographer everyday that I’m shooting photos! I feel like if your attitude as a creative person is that “I know it all” and I can’t learn anything new about my craft, your time is over! From that point forward, you’ll probably never progress and get better at what you do!!

I always enjoy looking back on the year to see what I’ve shot and to pick out some of my best work. It can be very hard when I look at all the photos that I’ve shot in a given year to just pick ten photos out of that year. 2013 was no exception and I started pulling some images and ended up with about 20 that I really liked and from there I had to whittle it down to my ten best! Very difficult indeed!!!!

Here’s my ten best photos for 2013 and I’ve added some notes for each of the photos with a little more info for those that want to know a little bit more!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work and I do very much appreciate it!!! 🙂

Have a great week to come!!!!!

Kev

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Welcome to winter!!!

-42 degree wind chill Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!

Yes folks that aren’t here in the Midwest, the wind chill this morning in Peoria is -42 degrees and that’s pretty darn cold!!!!! It’s not like this happens every year to us, but we do get blasted every few years with a -20 degree wind chill, so it’s not completely out of the question! The thing to do on days like this is to stay inside if possible and out of the elements! I know that barring an emergency on Monday, I’m not going anywhere!!!!!!!

Here’s a little something to warm you up on a cold day! I’ve put together some of my photos and video from the Big Island of Hawaii from December into a nice five minute slideshow! I know on days like this to see the tropical vegetation and have the warm trade winds blowing on you is pretty darn good! It will probably be awhile before we see temperatures in Peoria in the 80’s, so this will have to do!!!

Enjoy the show! Turn up the music and drift off to paradise for five minutes!!! Here’s the YouTube link for the Hawaii slideshow!

Alright, stay warm and inside if you can and know that spring is coming, just not soon enough! Have a great rest of the week and thanks as always for checking out my work!!!!!

Kev

It’s a wrap!!!

Year end Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Here we are at the end of 2013 and we’re just about ready to turn the calendar to a new page and a new year! It was a good year with a lot of great shoots and I was on the road for a number of them!!!! I’d always like to have a nice mix of shoots in town and on the road and this year it seemed like that was the case. Too much of either of those is not a good thing!!! I picked up some new clients in 2013 and that’s always nice as well!

All right, it’s time to get busy and get rocking in 2014! I’ll be all ready to go after having had a nice couple of months in November and December! Things are traditionally slow work wise, so it’s always been a good time to leave town on vacation!!!! As they say, “I’m tan, rested and ready to go!!!”

Here’s one of my shots from a couple of weeks ago in Kona, Hawaii. The cruise ships come into port in the morning at Kona and sail at night to their next destination. This ship was Norwegian Cruise Line’sPride of America” which sails to the different Hawaiian islands!

I hope that you’re going to have a very safe and fun New Years tomorrow night!!!! Have a great 2104 as well and let’s make it the best year every!!!!! Thanks as always for checking out my photography and it’s very much appreciated by me!!!! 🙂

Kev

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The Painted Church

Monday morning Peoria greetings!!!!

Wow, reality once again!!!! Flying back from Hawaii yesterday and you already know the weather is not going to be as nice as what you left behind less then 24 hours earlier! Oh well, we can’t all live in paradise!!!! 🙂

We spend 12 days on the Big Island of Hawaii and as always, it didn’t disappoint!!! There is just so much to see and you’ll never do it in a week or even a year!!! One of the places that we saw and shoot photos of back in 2008 when we were there before was the Painted Church on the Big Island. The offical title of the church is St. Benedict Roman Catholic Church, but on the island it’s know as the Painted Church. It was painted by Father John Velghe in 1899 and the inside is something that you’ll probably not see in a church outside of Hawaii!!

Here’s one of my many snaps of the inside of the Painted Church and as you can see, it’s not a very big place! This imagine is a 180 degree view of the front half of the church!

It’s Christmas week and I know that a lot of you will be off of work and spending time with family and friends! I hope that your week is a wonderful one and also a safe one if you’re traveling!!!!

Thanks again for checking out my work and have a great Christmas week!!!

Kev

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Mele Kalikimaka!!!

Monday morning greetings from Kona, Hawaii!!!

It’s coming on the end of the year and for me it’s usually a very slow time work wise! During the course of the year it can be so hard to predict a good time to take a vacation because of work, but at this time of the year it’s a good time to get out of town! You never know what the weather is going to be like leading up to Christmas and this year it sounds like we are missing a bunch of cold and snow in Peoria!

Well, when you’re in paradise, sunsets and 80 degree weather are never too upsetting! Unfortunately paradise in the 50th state will have to end and reality of the snow and cold will hit us!!!! Oh well, we’ll enjoy this while it lasts and then get back home!!!

Here’s one of my shots from Kona and a glorious sunset on the Pacific Ocean and some of the boats and a cruise ship in the harbor!!!

Oh by the way, Mele Kalikimaka is Merry Christmas in Hawaiian and we’re less then 10 days away from Christmas in case you had forgotten!!!!!!!!!!

Have a great week to come and thanks for checking out my work!!!!!

Kev

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